Tactile recognition of visual stimuli: Specificity versus generalization of perceptual learning

Arnold, Gabriel; Auvray, Malika

doi:10.1016/j.visres.2017.11.007

Cited by 10 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 56 publications

(70 reference statements)

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“…6,8 Between these two extremes are the tactile and electrotactile SSDs. 5 Tactile SSD systems do provide a spatio-temporal stimulation that resembles that of vision but through sensory organs that may not convey visual perception. Evaluation of all these devices has relied primarily on MAFC testing, as commonly applied in clinical or psychophysical studies.…”

Section: Mafc Testing Of Prosthetic Vision Functionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is not known if SSDs, such as tactile stimulation of the skin, 5 electrical stimulation of the tongue (for example, the BrainPort 4 ; Wicab, Inc.; Middleton, WI), or visual-to-auditory sensory substitution devices [6][7][8][9] lead to visual perception. All these SSD systems lead to a sensory response, but that is not necessarily vision as it is defined above.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Testing Vision Is Not Testing For Vision

Peli

2020

Trans. Vis. Sci. Tech.

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Visual prostheses aim to restore, at least to some extent, vision that leads to the type of perception available for sighted patients. Their effectiveness is almost always evaluated using clinical tests of vision. Clinical vision tests are designed to measure the limits of parameters of a functioning visual system. I argue here that these tests are rarely suited to determine the ability of prosthetic devices and other therapies to restore vision. This paper describes and explains many limitations of these evaluations. Prosthetic vision testing often makes use of multiple-alternative forced-choice (MAFC) procedures. Although these paradigms are suitable for many studies, they are frequently problematic in vision restoration evaluation. Two main types of problems are identified: (1) where nuisance variables provide spurious cues that can be learned in repeated training, which is common in prosthetic vision, and thus defeat the purpose of the test; and (2) even though a test is properly designed and performed, it may not actually measure what the researchers believe, and thus the interpretation of results is wrong. Examples for both types of problems are presented. Additional problems arise from confounding factors in the administration of tests are pointed as limitations of current device evaluation. For example, head tracing of magnified objects enlarged to compensate for the system's low resolution, in distinction from the scanning head (camera) movements with which users of prosthetic devices expand the limited field of view. Because of these problems, the ability to perform satisfactorily on the clinical tests is necessary but insufficient to prove vision restoration, therefore, additional tests are needed. I propose some directions to pursue in such testing. Translational Relevance Numerous prosthetic devices are being developed and introduced to the market. Proving the utility of these devices is crucial for regulatory and even for post market acceptance, which so far has largely failed, in my opinion. Potential reasons for the failures despite success in regulatory testing and directions for designing improved testing are provided. It is hoped that improved testing will guide improved designs of future prosthetic systems and other vision restoration approaches.

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Section: Mafc Testing Of Prosthetic Vision Functionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Testing Vision Is Not Testing For Vision

Peli

2020

Trans. Vis. Sci. Tech.

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“…This result provides behavioural support for the claim that training in sensory substitution results in a relative independence from the stimulated body surface. In addition, transfer of learning to novel stimuli has been documented for both tactile (Arnold and Auvray, 2018;Kim and Zatorre, 2010) and auditory devices (Kim and Zatorre, 2008). This ability to generalize to new symbols depends on the number of stimuli to learn and on feature variability (Arnold and Auvray, 2018).…”

Section: Sensory Substitution Learning and Body Kinematicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, transfer of learning to novel stimuli has been documented for both tactile (Arnold and Auvray, 2018;Kim and Zatorre, 2010) and auditory devices (Kim and Zatorre, 2008). This ability to generalize to new symbols depends on the number of stimuli to learn and on feature variability (Arnold and Auvray, 2018). These results are in line with the reverse hierarchy theory (RHT) of perceptual learning (Ahissar and Hochstein, 2004), according to which the degree of specificity depends on the difficulty of the perceptual task and on the level of cortical processing that is required to perform the task.…”

Section: Sensory Substitution Learning and Body Kinematicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ears on the Hand: Reaching Three-Dimensional Targets With an Audio-Motor Device

Hanneton¹,

Hoellinger

Forma

et al. 2020

Multisens. Res.

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Understanding the processes underlying sensorimotor coupling with the environment is crucial for sensorimotor rehabilitation and sensory substitution. In doing so, devices which provide novel sensory feedback consequent to body movement may be optimized in order to enhance motor performance for particular tasks. The aim of the study reported here was to investigate audio-motor coupling when the auditory experience is linked to movements of the head or the hands. The participants had to localize and reach a virtual source with the dominant hand in response to sounds. An electromagnetic system recorded the position and orientation of the participants’ head and hands. This system was connected to a 3D audio system that provided binaural auditory feedback on the position of the virtual listener located on the participants’ body. The listener’s position was computed either from the hands or from the head. For the hand condition, the virtual listener was placed on the dominant hand (the one used to reach the target) in Experiment 1 and on the non-dominant hand, which was constrained in order to have similar amplitude and degrees of freedom as that of the head, in Experiment 2. The results revealed that, in the two experiments, the participants were able to localize a source within the 3D auditory environment. Performance varied as a function of the effector’s degrees of freedom and the spatial coincidence between sensor and effector. The results also allowed characterizing the kinematics of the hand and head and how they change with audio-motor coupling condition and practice.

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“…For example, Richardson et al (2020) used the Brain-Port to investigate the brain's construction of verticality through the tongue, showing it may be a viable tool to study other aspects of spatial construction. However, a possible issue with the BrainPort is that it maps the concept of "up" with the back of the tongue (see Figure 1), which may add a further spatial manipulation and may reduce user competence (Arnold et al, 2016;Arnold & Auvray, 2018;Pamir et al, 2020;Richardson et al, 2020). Further, recent work has suggested that the tongue suffers with an information "bottleneck" at the back, meaning that information presented to the front is a higher TACTILE ATTENTION ON THE SURFACE OF THE TONGUE 927 fidelity than that of the back (Pamir et al, 2020).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Orientation of tactile attention on the surface of the tongue.

Richardson¹,

Petrini²,

Proulx³

2022

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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The tongue is an incredibly complex sensory organ, yet little is known about its tactile capacities compared to the hands. In particular, the tongue receives almost no visual input during development and so may be calibrated differently compared to other tactile senses for spatial tasks. Using a cueing task, via an electro-tactile display, we examined how a tactile cue (to the tongue) or an auditory cue can affect the orientation of attention to electro-tactile targets presented to one of four regions on the tongue. We observed that response accuracy was generally low for the same modality condition, especially at the back of the tongue. This implies that spatial localization ability is diminished either because the tongue is less calibrated by the visual modality or because of its position and orientation inside the body. However, when cues were provided cross-modally, target identification at the back of the tongue seemed to improve. Our findings suggest that, while the brain relies on a general mechanism for spatial (and tactile) attention, the surface of the tongue may not have clear access to these representations of space when solely provided via electro-tactile feedback but can be directed by other sensory modalities. Public Significance StatementThis study suggests that, while the tongue is an incredibly sensitive sensory organ to touch sensations, it does not process tactile attention in a uniform way. This has some implications for accessibility devices that use the tongue as a method for interacting with technology. Very little is known about the touch capabilities of the tongue, and these results begin to explore the tongue's attentional processing on its surface.

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Tactile recognition of visual stimuli: Specificity versus generalization of perceptual learning

Cited by 10 publications

References 56 publications

Testing Vision Is Not Testing For Vision

Testing Vision Is Not Testing For Vision

Ears on the Hand: Reaching Three-Dimensional Targets With an Audio-Motor Device

Orientation of tactile attention on the surface of the tongue.

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